AFRICA 2002: FAO calls for urgent donor aid

(Source: IRIN) - Donor countries should urgently commit food aid and financial support to Southern Africa to avert a major humanitarian crisis, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned in a report.

The FAO report said only 24 percent of the US$507 million needed to provide food assistance to more than 10 million people until the next main harvest in April 2003 had been pledged. Assistance was also urgently needed to provide agricultural inputs to help farmers recover from the crisis.

"The food situation in Southern Africa is of grave concern. A prolonged dry spell during the 2001/02 growing season, and excessive precipitation in parts, devastated crops in large growing areas.

“In Zimbabwe, reduced planting in the large-scale commercial sector due to land reform activities compounded the problem. Maize production in the sub-region fell sharply, reaching less than one-quarter of last year's level in Zimbabwe, one-third in Lesotho and just over a half in Malawi, Zambia and Swaziland,” the report said.

More than half of Zimbabwe’s population was reported in need of food aid and FAO called for "additional donor contributions" to stem the deterioration of the food situation.

Malawi had also been hard hit by the food crisis with instances of starvation reported in parts of the country earlier this year. The report estimated that some 3.2 million people had been affected by reduced food availability. Distribution of relief food had begun to about 500,000 people, and that number would rise to 3.2 million by December.

In Zambia, the report said, "severe crop losses during the last cropping season due to drought have left some 2.3 million people, or about one-quarter of the population, in need of food assistance".

In Angola, an estimated 500,000 people were in a "critical nutritional condition", FAO said. Whereas, at the national level, Mozambique had a good cereal harvest, but the food situation in the southern region and parts of central regions was extremely tight.

In Namibia, the food supply situation was also described as "tight" following a sharp decline in this year's cereal production.